4.3: Automatic Community Moderation

One huge benefit of running your own Invision Community is the moderation tools.

Out of the box, Invision Community allows you to turn members into moderators. Better still, you can define what these moderators have permission to do.

Part of this moderation suite is the report system. The report system allows your members to flag posts that need a moderator's attention.

There comes a time when your community is so successful that it can be a little tough to keep up with all the content and reports.

Community Moderation
This new feature leverages your member reports to automatically remove objectionable content from public view.

You as the admin will define thresholds for the content. For example, you may say that to hide content, a post needs 5 reports.

This reduces the workload for your moderators and enables you to crowd source moderation.

Let's take a look at this feature in a little more detail.

Reporting Content
When a member reports a piece of content, they now have the option to set a type, such as "Spam" or "Offensive". These options can count towards the threshold. Once the threshold has been passed the item is hidden.

The threshold can be set up by creating rules in the Admin CP.

Admin Set Up
At its heart of the system are the rules. You can create custom rules in the Admin CP to determine the thresholds.

For example, you may decide that:

A member with less than 10 posts only needs 5 reports to hide the content.

But you may want to give more experienced members a higher threshold as there is more trust.

You simply add a new rule:

A member who joined over a year ago with over 500 posts needs 10 reports to hide content.

You can do that easily with the rules system as it will scan them all and pick the one most suitable for this member.

It's as simple as that.

Notifications
Once an item has received enough reports to match the threshold, it is automatically hidden from view.

A notification is sent to all moderators who opt in for notifications. This notification shows inline in the notifications center.

It can also optionally be sent via email for those who want to know without checking the site.

Restoring the content
Of course, a moderator may decide that the content is fine and un-hide it. Once a piece of content has been un-hidden, automatic moderation will not hide it again.

Report Types
Depending on your community, the default types may not be suitable or relevant. You may also want to set up other report types.

You can do this via the Admin CP.

Preventing Abuse
Your first thought may be that a single member can report a single item multiple times to force content to be hidden.

The system will only count a unique member as one point towards the threshold. This means a single member can report an item 5 times, but they are only counted once towards the threshold.

You can also set a time limit between reporting the same item. This will prevent a member reporting a single item multiple times in succession.

Of course, the member can delete their report if it was in error.

Report Center
The Report Center is the hub for all reported content. Invision Community 4.3 adds a filter to view a specific report type. The reports themselves also show the type of report.

We hope that this new feature will be a huge help and time saver for you and your moderators.

We'd love to hear your thoughts, please let us know what you think and if you have any questions.

Am I understanding the rules parameters right such that I could set a lower hide threshold for posts reported as spam (say, 2 reports for a user with < 10 posts) vs other types (which may warrant more reports to trigger the auto-hide).

Am I understanding the rules parameters right such that I could set a lower hide threshold for posts reported as spam (say, 2 reports for a user with < 10 posts) vs other types (which may warrant more reports to trigger the auto-hide).

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Any chance to change update method from that big updates to more frequent but lesser in features? I'm already see - i will need to get 4.3 and adopt our apps and plugins totally (some of them created from blank, as i did it when wants to update from 4.1.6 to 4.2). With lesser updates i can simply see changes and adopt current apps/plugins for support new little feature (such as member log, change oauth from our to internal your method and more more other things). With your BIG updates we can't controll all that. It is easier to upgrade app/plugin from scratch than to checks it and understand 'is that ok? and this? and this?'

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What about the notice in the last screenshot: '1 Automatic Moderation Points'? Will there be any further info about when the threshold will be reached? Like: '1 Automatic Moderation Point (3 left until auto-hide)' or something similar?

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2. I like how Matt flattered us all and said our communities are simply SO successful that we don't have time to moderate. Yes, yes that's totally the reason. (It could just be I'm a lazy admin, but whatever. Now I can be lazy and successful!).

Am I understanding the rules parameters right such that I could set a lower hide threshold for posts reported as spam (say, 2 reports for a user with < 10 posts) vs other types (which may warrant more reports to trigger the auto-hide).

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Is it possible among automatic moderation , to add an option that prevents new members with less than x posts from posting links or images? I get a lot of spam posts from people who just sign up only to make a single spam post with a link or photo, then never return.